pinteresting

Ok, hands up who is addicted to Pinterest? It is a visual feast, and a great way to store any mood board type pictures and inspiration you may have for certain projects so that they are all in one place. Have just found it and begun to use it as a way to relax and unwind in the evenings after little miss is in bed, but I am finding that it is keeping me up far too late! Anyway, go check me out and if you are on there, follow me so I can keep an eye on your likes too!

baby crocheted loveliness

Firstly, a very happy new year to you all, hope you had a wonderful festive period. I wanted to quickly share with you all a thoughtful gift received beautifully wrapped for my little girl's first Christmas.

Emma Varnam, a very talented designer who I have met through Inside Crochet magazine kindly sent it to us and it has been very useful already, as well as being a very pretty accessory which has received countless compliments from strangers as she is proudly pushed around town in it!

I don't think Emma has written the pattern up yet, so head over to her blog and pester her to do so!!

New DMC patterns

This was the last crochet project I worked on before the birth, finishing off in between naps and with my swollen feet up!

Take a peek at the other patterns on the DMC website, as there are some fabby ones - I particularly like the new Natura pattern book.

fabulous fair finds!

I have been quite poorly since the littl'un was born, but finally managed a trip out at the recently and went on a little walk to the local church fair, which was fabulous. One of the stalls was selling handmade items, and I spied some familiar knitted floral brooches in beautiful colours (above). The vicar's grandchildren had knitted them from my own book 'Knitting for Children' and had made a fantastic job of it, choosing shades that went well together, making a very pretty presentation on the stall. One of the beautiful girls, Jolie, had made a fabulous ball of yarn from finger knitted tubes (below) she must be going for the world record! I wonder how many metres there are and how long it took her. It is a fabulous pastime to keep her busy while in front of the tv!

I also donated some of my toys for the benefit of the church, and bought the most beautiful dolls pram from the 1930s which I purchased for little Millie's first Christmas present. It is a bit well-worn, but I am looking forward to bringing it out in the spring to spruce up and maybe use to decorate the nursery until she is old enough to push her dolls and teddies in it.

Looking forward to many more Christmas fairs over the next few weeks!

a new arrival...

A recent break in the blog and my knitting life in general can be explained by this little person, who will be receiving the sole attention on my needles and hooks for quite some time! During my career break, I shall try to post occasionally about my projects, such as the green booties she is sporting, or trying to, in the above piccie, for her and any interesting things which my happen in my now very different life. The green booties are a very simple pattern from my book Easy Baby Knits which I had great fun re-knitting for my own little bundle of joy.

Knitting as normal will resume sometime next year.

crochet for children - out now!

So, it is finally out! My new book teaching children to crochet, Crochet for Children is aimed at kids, but hopefully the patterns are cute and interesting enough to appeal to their parents and grandparents too, so all the family will enjoy using this book. I love it, and hope you do too! Here are some pictures from the book, let me know what you think!

quilting...

I am going through a very exciting period of my life at the moment, which I plan to blog about more very soon, but in the meantime, I apologise for lack of presence here and leave you some pretty pictures of some fabric I have bought for a very important new arrival, which may see me sewing (or doing hardly any crafts at all...) rather than knitting for a while....

the top lot come from a rather gorgeous little shop in Canterbury and I had a ball choosing which fabrics I thought would look fabulous with some I had already bought. It took hours!

These (above) are Japanese cottons from the absolutely fabulous Eternal Maker in Chichester and the ones below are from the now sadly closed Sally Bourne in Crouch End. Can't wait to show you what the finished article is like!

...more soon!